Up on the hills, sitting like a king on a throne,
stood the sanctuary, a dilapidated baroque remembrance that used to
blend harmoniously with the rich villas in the surroundings. From its
position, it dominated the town. It was a privileged position for a
privileged site, consecrated centuries ago in virtue of the
miraculous disappearance of the plague from the town below, an
occurrence that had contributed to hand over the site to a flow of
pilgrims whose faith, in time, would not be enough to save the area
from mundanity.

From the hills the sanctuary overlooked a town which,
only a few years before, had prided itself on a bounty of monuments
that reflected its Renaissance spirit and the placid, drowsy
character of a wealthy provincial Italian town. No trace of that
pride remained; placidness was a quality that had abandoned the
landscape, migrating to a utopian time when war was nothing but a
word without referent. Now the view looming from the sanctuary was
spectral and the town remained mute, immersed in a silence that spoke
of desolation, rather than quiescence. Begun more than two years
before, Christmas 1943, the bombings had left behind a heap of ruins,
ravenously swallowing up the bodies of buildings and the bodies of
men alike. The sanctuary had not escaped it and the triumphal arch
rising on the 192 steps that led to the church had finally
surrendered, humbly crumbling down like a sandcastle dried by a
ferocious midday sun. But the steps were there, somehow.

Rosa’s heart held on to those steps. They said
if you climbed them on your knees and at each step you said a prayer,
once you reached the sanctuary you would be granted your prayers. So
Rosa climbed and prayed, 192 prayers. She prayed for her son, whose
life had been gambled by people who had no right over its control.
Sent to war, he hadn’t come back, despite the war was over.
Rosa prayed that he came back. She wouldn’t give up hope. She
couldn’t. Her other son, she knew it for sure, was dead, blown
up together with the cruiser he was on, sunk and buried in a sea that
centuries before had been sailed by more peaceful crafts. So she held
on to those steps.

Rosa had married young and had had a happy, loving
marriage. They were not rich. In fact, they were poor, almost
destitute. Her husband was a rag-and-bone man with a bent for cooking
and a passion for opera. Rosa looked after the family and contributed
to the meagre income with some sewing. Regularly, she would go down
to the river that flowed through the town, carrying her laundry
together with dozens of other women, “washerwomen” they
called them. In spite of hardship, Rosa smiled and sang all the time.
She had good reasons for being joyful. When your mother dies in
childbirth and your father is so poor that he has no choice but
entrust the only daughter to relatives and seek his fortune abroad,
well, no matter how good those relatives are to you, you still long
for a family of your own. So one after the other, Rosa gave birth to
seven children, four girls and three boys, and the family, her
family, was cheerfully making its way through life. Rosa’s
voice was sweet and hearty, a sheer pleasure for everybody to listen
to. Accompanied by her voice, the girls grew into pretty young women,
wearing shapeless charity clothes and bright smiles that resembled
their mother’s. Accompanied by her voice, the boys grew into
merry young men, too busy ogling their sweethearts and studying
mechanics to find the time to get depressed over their lack of
material comforts. They too were smiling, like Rosa.

They say that decline is a natural consequence of all
that’s alive. Rosa’s singing, then, must have been
throbbing with a life of its own, because it started waning a few
years before the war. Rosa’s eldest daughter had slowly and
painfully abandoned the path of youth, to follow the breath-taking,
consuming road of disease and death. And then came the war and Rosa’s
two eldest sons were called up. That’s when her singing came to
a halt and she sang no more. Three sons, one too young to join the
army, the other two willingly or unwillingly sent to opposite
directions. One, like Ulysses, to conquer the warm southern sea, the
other to brave the biting breath of the coldest northern wind he had
ever experienced. At the beginning, Rosa received many letters. They
didn’t mention the war. They sent their thoughts to their
parents, they inquired about friends, they said hello to sisters.
They communicated, through their simple words, how much Rosa’s
smile and voice were missed. When letters stopped arriving, Rosa’s
smile, together with her singing, left the house and her life. Yet,
there was no time to abandon oneself to self-commiseration; there was
only time to pray and climb 192 steps on one’s knees, begging
the sanctuary to let a distant son come back. In vain. While Rosa’s
climbed step after step, her son went missing, lost in the vastness
of a country which didn’t fit his little universe of family,
friends, sweethearts and machines. Received into the womb of a land
that devoured instead of nurturing, he had taken with him one last
travelling companion: his mother’s singing. Rosa stopped
singing, as if with that gesture she had intended to give her son her
ultimate gift. Singing had become sacred, much more sacred than
praying, and as such it had to be protected, hallowed in the shrine
of memory and maternal devotion.

Rosa’s voice never bore again any trace of that
youthful gaiety that accompanied her while she walked to the river.
The lightness of her singing had been crushed by the burden and stiff
coldness of two posthumously awarded medals, “in memory”.
But, unlike her singing, as years rolled by Rosa’s smile
regained strength, enough strength to lift the lid of grief and
resurface onto her face. For two lost sons, one son-in-law came back.
Wounded, starved, exhausted, shattered. Alive. For two lost sons, two
daughters were smiling again when they looked into the mesmerising,
sometimes uncanny eyes of their children, who had entered a life made
of memories, hopes, courage and opera music. Rosa stopped climbing
steps, but her strong legs supported her while she walked in a town,
her town, which was gradually and eagerly healing itself. Like Rosa.
Her strong legs supported her until ripe old age, helping her look
after a great-granddaughter who climbed steps for fun, not for
sorrow. Rosa smiled at her great-granddaughter’s curious
babbling. Life, after all, was worth smiling at.

*****

Ilaria was born in Italy. She holds an MSc (UMIST,
Manchester, UK) and a PhD (University of Warwick, UK), both in
Translation Studies. She has been working as a freelance translator
(English/French/Spanish >Italian). She has a keen interest in
orality, storytelling, and the 19thcentury,
and enjoys writing short stories, mainly introspective ones. She has
a cat called Othello.